DEJA VU

0:06 Welcome to Unspeakable, a true crime podcast where I tell stories of real crimes with real victims, whose cases are so shocking that many are left wondering how is this even real? I use my experiences in law enforcement corrections, and combined with my years as a criminal justice educator, dig deep into complex cases of evil acts, some so evil many feel they are unspeakable. Warning. Unspeakable as intended for mature audiences. If you are easily offended, then I'm not your girl. Listening discretion is advised. Hey, y'all, it's kJ You're back with another episode of Unspeakable. Are you ready for this one? Because this was not the episode I was actually gonna do this week, but it caught my attention and I was like, ah, Mama is going to switch directions because these people need to hear this story told by yours truly. Before I jump in, though, I have some shout outs and I'm going to start in boise and this is gonna be Leslie Snyder. How are you doing, Leslie? I'm waving at you on the camera.

1:23 Thank you so much for joining my crime family. I appreciate each and every single person that joins, even y'all I have people that leave, and I understand you have reasons that you gotta go, but then they come back, and that to me is just a nod to how much you appreciate the content. And so thank you so very much everyone who comes and goes. I appreciate you at all times. Now, Miss Linda Bowen in Huntsville, Alabama, what is going on, Linda. I have been to Huntsville, Alabama. It's a lovely place. And then Ellisville, Mississippi, is where Amanda Holder is and Amanda, girl, you went all out. You just bought you a whole year right there in one drop, and I appreciate that as well. And then we're going to in today in Erath, Louisiana, where Miss Alli Pickles is living. And what a precious name. I don't know if Pickles is your real last name, but I love it. And that was the name of my niece's chinchilla that we just recently lost. Rest in peace, little Pickles. We loved her for many, many years. So Ali right there in e Wrath, girl, welcome to the Crime family. So happy to have you. But we're not going to stay in Louisiana today, y'all. We are going to go to Arkansas, and as I start this story, we're going to go pretty far back, and then we're going to work our way forward and you'll see why.

2:38 Because I want to ask you something. Do you believe in deja vus? Have you ever experienced it before? Because I know for a fact I have. It's like you can feel that you have done this before, You've been here before, you've seen these things before. I have felt it, and it is such a strange and sometimes even an unnerving whenever it does happen, you sit there and you're like, how the hell could I have done this before, been here before? It's my first time. Well, this case is going to leave you feeling just like that when we are done. But how could this be? Well, we're going to back up to the year nineteen ninety six, and this was set to be an amazing year for seventy five year old Sally McKay. Now, her life had been one so far that it kind of sounds like it's coming out of a Huckleberry Finn era, one rich in history, and it makes you want to just like sip sweet tea as you're rocking on the front porch of a house, because Sally's great great grandfather had been a colonel in the Civil War who afterwards settled into everyday life in Memphis, Tennessee, where he then became a successful landowner. Now, Kelly, why did you just go from nineteen ninety six back to the Civil War? Hang on, guys, I'm getting there. But after Sally's great great grandfather left that Civil War and settled and became that landowner, he also fell in love

4:09 with Miss Anne Brinkley. Now miss Anne Brinkley. Her daddy was famous in those parts because he was played a big role in establishing the Memphis to Little Rock railroad line of the times. So Colonel Robert Bogardis he decided that he was going to make an honest woman of miss Brinkley, and he moved her into an elegant mansion, the one only fitting for his beautiful bride Anne. And the name of that mansion, I'm sure you want to know, well, it was Annsdale, of course, named right after that beautiful woman. Even today, that home stands as a highly regarded home on the National Register of Historic Places, and it's currently used for big events like weddings and other things that require large venues. Well, in that mansion, the couple would become the proud parents of five children. And one of those five children, he was a son named after his father. Well, he too would grow up and become a successful landowner himself. Well, that son, again, his name was Robert, after his own dad.

5:17 He had some sons of his own that he would also name Robert. And I'm giving you this long history because it really plays a role in this story that we're starting now. That Robert was named Robert Snowden, and he grew up to become a soldier in World War One. After his service, he would then come home and he bought one thousand acres of land in Arkansas. So we've got this lineage of men that went to war, that fought, and then came home, bought some land, became very successful, and found the loves of their lives. Now, mister Robert Snowden, he would create and grow a successful plantation at what's known as Horseshoe Lake. So he and his wife Grace, when they settled there, they didn't build a home as grand as their ancestors had. They instead built this modest yet lovely home right there on their property. But the best part It had a screened in porch that looked straight out over the lake, and it provided a beautiful place to sit and watch the sunset each and every day.

6:28 But by nineteen forty nine, that modest home had been expanded to a three story, six thousand square foot home that was the envy of everyone in town. And it was proof that hard work and dedication can deliver the home of your dreams over time. Now, let's talk about this house, y'all, because it's nothing to shake a stick at a promise. I want to give you a visual here. I want you to think marble floors and a massive crystal chandelier, finished out with a grand staircase that gives the air of a South Louisiana Anna Bellum home. It's absolutely positively stunning and gives you the sense of times gone by. It's beautiful, and in that home the family tree of this family I've been speaking of. They would continue to produce branches throughout the years. Four children would be born in that home, one son and three daughters, And one of those daughters was Miss Sally Snowden, the woman who I started this story about. She's now going to be considered Miss Sallie McKay. You follow me great, So her real name was Sarah, but everyone in her family called her Sally and Sally's childhood again, it was something straight out of a classic Southern tale. She and her siblings grew up in this very home, sharing memories and love until they all grew up, spread their wings

7:59 and they all moved away, but Miss Sally well, she would return eventually to this childhood home in nineteen eighty two after her divorce from her husband his name was David McKay, and her children they were now grown and they were off doing their own thing. But when Sally divorced her husband, she would then find out or get the news rather that her father had passed away, and so she made her way back to her roots at Horseshoe Lake and Sally she had already made her mark on the world as a CPA and that training was going to be super super important because it left her very well equipped to take over the family business, which had now grown to include thirty lakefront cabins, amongst other related business dealings. So she tended to this family home as well as opened and ran an an antique shop in the area. So she may have been a single woman, but she was busy, and she was busy, business minded, a successful woman who made her own way despite all of the hardships that she had faced throughout her life. Well, as fate would have it, her nephew would also face some hardships of his own. Now. Her nephew's name was Joseph Baker, and he was a very well known and I guess you'd say semi famous in the area blues musician as well as a high school English teacher. And

9:31 he played the blues like I told you, But his thing was that he could straight up rip on the guitar. He was absolutely just just renowned for his musicianship and his musicality and his ability to play this guitar well. His home it would have, unfortunately go up in Flames on August the twelfth of nineteen ninety six, and this would be devastating for anyone, but it was especially difficult him because he lost everything, which included his priceless memorabilia from his times playing in his band, and he had played also with famous people that had given him things like priceless guitars and signed you know, memorabilian things of that nature. Just things he would never be able to recover, and that hit him hard. That was his life, was his music. Well, investigators had been following a rash of burglaries in the area, and it was believed that the fire wasn't accidental. They believed that this was actually an arson that was started to cover up a burglary. See, the burglars absolutely hit the jackpot whenever they went inside of his house, because not only was there that precious memorabilia, but Joseph had a bunch of cash stowed away in the house. He had been saving it up because they were about to print his band's newest record. So to help offset this hardship that Joseph was now facing, his

11:04 Aunt Sally offered for he and his family to move into one of the cabins on the family property, and this cabin was only about one hundred yards from where Miss Sally was staying. This was a very welcomed offer and the family jumped right at it and was like, oh my gosh, thank you, we appreciate this so much. Well, roughly a month would go by and it was a Tuesday morning when Joseph left his family cabin to go and speak with his aunt Sally at her house, but Joseph hadn't returned home yet, when in an unbelievable turn of events, responders were called to Sally's home after a report of a fire came in there like what in the hell, But by the time help arrived, the home had been completely engulfed and it was deemed a total loss.

11:57 So police were convinced that this must have been the world of burglars again in that same area, trying to conceal evidence of a burglary. It just kind of fit the same mo there well. Unfortunately, as they are processing the scene and the fire officials are going through all of the what's left of the home, this would be found to be far worse than a burglary and an arson because as the firemen were sifting through the rubble and the ash, they were surprised to find the bodies of not one, but two people in the home, and this arson had resulted in the death of two people.

12:37 Of course, those bodies were collected and they were sent for autopsy and they were very soon after identified as that of seventy five year old aunt Sally and her nephew fifty three year old Joseph, and it can't you can't help but just go. My god, this poor family had already been through so much and now this, I mean, Miss Sally was dead at the hands of someone else, and two arsons in one month of this same man's family and now he's dead two I mean, that's almost unbelievable. I always say all the time, I don't believe in coincidence, but it was this just a tragic coincidences. Poor wife, I can't imagine what she was thinking. Wouldn't you feel targeted? Like, my god, they burned down my first house, and now my husband's deceased in his aunt's house and there's a fire.

13:27 I wouldn't have blamed her if she would have felt that her family was targeted. Well. As the autopsies were concluded, there would be another revelation that was completely unexpected. The bodies of the two people. Their location, first of all, was odd because they were found together in the home. Aunt Sally and her nephew Joseph were together in the home, and it wasn't like they hadn't been able to get out of the house. There were exits, there were windows. I mean, who stays in a house and lets it go up and why didn't they leave, Well, that was easily answered because the coroner identified that both bodies were suffering from gunshot wounds. The investigators were correct they couldn't leave the fire, but that's because they were already dead when the fire started. So based on the timeline of the fire and the response, it was determined that they must have been victims of a burglary that turned home invasion that turned arson. So there was a process to how this all had started. Basically, Miss Sally and Joseph were believed to have met up and been together whenever they came upon the burglar in the home spooked him, and they didn't because they didn't know that the burglar was even in the house, So they believed that they went into the house they didn't know that there was a burglar in there, and whenever they realized that they

14:57 weren't alone, it was already too late. Who what ever was in that house had been armed with a weapon, and when the opportunity came, that person shot and killed them both dead in cold blood, right there on the floor. So they were shot. Based on everything that was known between ten thirty and eleven am well to lend itself to this theory that the police had. Sally's vehicle was also missing from the home, which is why burglary gone wrong was believed to be the motive, because I know someone's gonna say, how would they even know if it's a burglary if it burnt down to the ground. Well, dead people in houses don't drive cars away, and so who took the car must have gone in this way.

15:41 So if she was dead in the house, obviously her car had been there, but it wasn't now, so obviously the assumption was the burglar took the car as a getaway car, but a short time later her car would be located by a neighbor, so she owned by aunt Sally she owned a Toyota Camri, and just roughly a mile west of the home, the neighbor found the car. It was wrecked and it was bad. It was a really, really bad wreck. The car was actually flipped over. It was not even on its wheels. So the belief once they got there and they looked at the vehicle was that it must have lost control, hit a tree and then rolled over upside down in the ditch. So when police go look inside, no one was at the crash of the car or at the scene of the crash of the car, and no one was inside of the vehicle either, but there was evidence that the driver was injured, so they thought this because the windshield was busted and there was a blood smear in the wreckage, so whoever did this was believed to be suffering from a head wound after striking the windshield when they wrecked the car.

16:53 But after all of this immediate information and findings, the case went kind of cold. Time passed, and by time, I mean days and then some weeks passed, and a press conference of sorts was even held on the property where the family decided to throw up and offer a ten thousand dollars reward for any information that may lead to the capture and the arrest of the killer of Aunt Sally and her nephew, but they would have to wait a total of four months for answers. But police were not twiddling their thumbs. Okay, I know when time passes, a lot of times the community gets pressed and they're like, why why don't we have someone arrested, Why don't we have this. The police have to do their job, they have to investigate, they have to dot the i's they have to cross the t's, and they were checking all possibilities.

17:45 They even checked in and asked people in the area that they thought just might be involved because they may have had previous run ins with police, or they may have been known burglars or arsonists or whatever. Four months after their deaths, police announced that an arrest had been made and the community was still reeling from all of these arsons that had happened. And now this double murder. This was not child's play, This was beyond that. This was crazy. But when the name of the person arrested was released, he was identified as Travis Lewis. But it wasn't his name that was so eyebrow raising. It was his age, because Travis Lewis was only fifteen years old whenever he committed this crime. Now, a young teen of this age being responsible for all of the damage and all of the chaos in this town in the recent time was shocking, But that shock would quickly move to the wayside when another realization was made. And this one hurts, y'all, This one hurts uh. And I think I say that because I personally would understand why this one cuts so deep.

19:08 And it's because Travis wasn't a random stranger to his two victims. Nephew Joseph Baker, Well, that was mister Baker to Travis, because he was Travis's very own English teacher at the high school. He had looked his own teacher in the face, a man he saw and spoke to every single day of his life, a man that was dedicated daily to bettering kids and trying to teach them a thing or two. He looked that man in the face before executing him, and he then turned and shot seventy five year old Miss Sally, who also wasn't a stranger to him, Travis's own mother. Her name was Gladys.

20:05 Miss Gladys worked for Miss Sally. She was a housekeeper at the main Snowden house, the Big Mansion. Not only that, but Travis's own grandparents rented a home from Miss Sally. This fifteen year old, he was sixteen by the time he was arrested. He had a birthday in those weeks. But this fifteen year old murdered two people who were nothing but kind to him and to his family. What kind of animal does this to people? Number one? But number two, what kind of person can do this to somebody?

20:45 That they know. It's much harder to do something to somebody that you know that's almost just unbelievable. So as this information was resonating with the family, the science, and the courts, well they were getting ready to do their job. Now, when Travis was questioned about his role in the murders and in the arson, he took zero responsibility for what happened. He continued to deny. He said it wasn't him, that it was someone else. He never admitted guilt nor took any responsibility for the murders. He would say, look, I was out just burglarizing homes, but I didn't kill anybody. Now, allegedly, which I cannot necessarily confirm this fact, but I did find it in my research, so I'm gonna share it with you. But again this is not confirmed by me.

21:37 But allegedly Travis took three polygraphs, but he passed them. It wasn't until he took a fourth polygraph examination that he failed it. Now, I don't read too much into that because even if you don't, even if you're like, oh my god, he passed these you know these light detector tests. Well, I really put a lot of my faith in hard evidence as well. I think that light detector tests are a good indicator, but hard evidence is something that I do put a lot of weight in. And by this I mean Travis's fingerprints were located in Miss Sally's stolen, wrecked vehicle and no one else's. So why would his fingerprints be there if he hadn't been driving the car and wrecked it? Great question. Well, when it came time for his trial, this was on April seventh of nineteen ninety eight, Travis pled guilty to the murders.

22:37 He was tried as an adult for his crimes, and the judge sentenced him to twenty eight and a half year's for these crimes. Now, why only twenty eight years, y'all? I can't tell you. I don't have an answer. I wasn't there. But all I can say is he better be glad. He better thank the God above that he did not do this in the state of Louisiana, because my state would have sunk him forever. Okay, murdering two people and burning down houses and all of that, no frickin way. But due to the laws that were in place, he got the twenty eight and a half years. But he also would have to be required to serve seventy percent of that sentence. So, considering he was only sixteen years old whenever he was convicted, this meant that he would not see freedom until he was forty four years old.

23:25 But he had the opportunity for parole. Now, should he be paroled early, that would mean at the earliest he would be released around the age of thirty five or thirty six, depending on whenever his birthday hit. All right, Now, when you commit a crime in Louisiana, oftentimes you'll hear it read that they have to serve life in prison without the benefit of probation, parole or suspension of sentence. And what that means is you will not parole out early, you will not get probation, and they're not going to be able to just throw your sentence to the side let you out. In this case, this guy got the ability for parole. Now, after the strike of the gavel, Travis was shipped off to prison to serve his sentence in the Arkansas Department of Corrections. And from what I understand, he spent a majority of his time in Grady, Arkansas, at a place that's called the Varner Unit. And I did look this up because I was curious about that unit.

24:25 And this is a supermax facility, and it looks as though they are offering a great deal of rehabilitative opportunities for inmates. I think that's one thing we do locally in our state of Louisiana. When you go to prison, there are opportunities for growth, specifically like at Angola. You know, you can learn a trade, you can become a successful and useful person even if you were behind bars. And isn't that that's the point of rehabilitation, I would assume, is that we better ourselves. So this facility he was sent to, it was known for housing juvenile offenders, which garnered it the nickname the quote unquote gladiator school. Okay, so it's like school on steroid for gladiators. I guess, so, Travis, he would have spent plenty of time here. He would have plenty of time to get his life back on track and possibly even have the opportunity at a life after prison. Not a lot of people who commit murder get that opportunity, but it was there for him. So prison all too often, if you don't know this, all it does is make young inmates better criminals by the time they are released. We know this when you take an offender, now granted he was a bad one, Okay, he murdered people and was a burglar at fifteen. But when you take someone of that caliber and then you put him in a prison setting amongst other people that may be a little bit old or more experienced than the criminal life, they're gonna learn how to be better criminals.

25:57 Hands down, it's gonna happen. But people will then say, but what about rehabilitation. Well, let's talk about that real quick. I'm not going to say I don't believe in rehabilitation. I really actually do in some offenders, not all, and I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole right now. But what I can tell you is that rehabilitation is also somewhat of a joke, especially when you give offenders that are youth shorter term sentencing. If they don't do a lot of time for what they've done, and it's a huge ish, a huge crime, they're not going to be rehabilitated. Why would they they didn't do much time. But in Travis's case, he's facing nearly thirty years, and inmates who have been down for a while will tell you one of the biggest pains of prison is the fact that your friends stop calling, They stop coming for sure, and even your family will stop visiting. Usually within the first five years if someone going to prison, most people have everyone falls off and they stop coming to in the visitation. Even your family gets tired of the long trips and the long days just to say hello and see you behind bars. But usually there is one person who you can count on to see you through in prison.

27:14 And I bet you can guess who it is. You're right, it's your mama. Mamas don't quit mama's love unconditionally, and mamas still see their babies even in the eyes of murderers. And it's the truth. But Travis, I can't speak to his mother necessarily in his thirty years. But there is another person who remained on his radar, and he would have none other than Buddha to thank for this. And you're like, does she just say Buddha, Yes, ma'am, yes, sir, I did. Let me explain. So. Miss Sally's children, who were grown by the time of her murder, well, they were very familiar with the family property where she was murdered because their own childhood memories were filled with that very home and property. While they had lived in a home or lived in that home for a few years.

28:19 After Sally and her husband got married, they took the kids and they moved them to them to San Francisco, and that's where the kids were raised. But they would always return back in the summertimes to spend time at the house. And it was just one of those places it's too beautiful to leave permanently, and the children always looked forward to those stays at the Snowden House during the summers. So getting to shift from the big city life and make that huge change to good old southern comfort was something that was received very well by their children each summer and at the Snowden House, and that's what it's called. These themes just rolled slower, you know.

29:03 They'd come from San Francisco, and they'd show up to see egrets wadding waiting around in the water and pecking at the small critters hoping for a meal. The lake was filled with lily pads, the roads were along, dinner was fresh when they were at the Snowden House. It's yard to table, okay, eggs fresh from the chickens. The hustle and the bustle of the city life was nowhere in sight. And one of Miss Sally's daughters, her name was Martha. She remembered those summers all too well, and when she learned of her mother's murder, she too decided to move back to that home and she was going to run it herself. Martha, let's talk about her. Very classy, very classy and kind woman. Martha was in her forties whenever she moved back to the property, and she devoted an incredible amount of time and money restoring and updating the beautiful home to be a popular wedding event type of venue. Now, when I say a credible amount of money, I'll just give you this tidbit because you're listening. The house didn't have air conditioning because of how old it was.

30:16 When air conditioning first came about, her grandfather had put in window units okay all over this house. Well that's like a monstrosity now in the nineties. So she took all of those out and paid tons of money to have central air put into the house. So those big investments were made. But this this is where Buddha comes in that I mentioned because Martha was a practicing Buddhist. And while I do not claim, by any stretch of the imagination, to be an expert in Buddhism, I can tell you that I am able to do research and I'm willing to do it. And this is what I found. I actually found exactly what I expected. But in Buddhist psychology, forgiveness is understood as a way to end your own suffering.

31:05 By forgiving someone, you can bring dignity and harmony into your own life. And basically what I'm saying is forgiveness is for your own sake. It's for your own mental health, and it's a way of letting go of the pain that we carry. And that's not exclusive to Buddhism, obviously, that extends across other religions. But there was one way that this was illustrated to me on a Buddhist website that I went to, and it was just this little quip okay that it explained it with. It said, two ex prisoners of war met up after many years, and the first one asked, have you forgiven our captors yet?

31:47 And the second man answered no, never. And then the first man replied, well, then they still have you in prison. And I thought that was incredible. That's a great way of explaining this. Well. Martha, in practicing her Buddhism, she believed in this concept of letting go to heal not only her own pain with the loss of her beloved mother and her cousin, but also to possibly maybe absolve the killer of the pain that he was sitting in. So after collecting your thoughts and realizing, look, I can actually actively help in my own healing, Martha did this very thing, and she made the extraordinary decision to reach out to her mother's murderer in prison. Now today, I want you to know, as I'm recording this in twenty twenty six, this type of situation is a much more regulated and overseen process than it necessarily was back when Martha did this. Okay, this experience today is referred to as victim offender dialogue. It's much more curated than anyone would probably ever stand unless you've been through it. So let me tell you real quick before I go forward in the story, I want to tell you why it's curated the way it is. A great deal of preparation goes into these meetings as victims and offenders, because the victim and the offender have to be on the same

33:19 page when this meeting is allowed. Okay, they've got to go into this with the same understanding of why they are meeting. Because there are studies that have been done. You can look this up on your own. Actually, I may link one. I make a note to myself. I'm a link one in a Patreon if you're a nerd like me and you want to go check it out so you can see what I'm talking about. But there are studies that have been done that showed that victims who participated in a face to face encounter with their offenders are they're much more likely to be satisfied with the justice process altogether, versus victims who only go through the traditional system of Okay, this guy killed my mom, he's not going to prison and for the rest of his life if they cut it off there, and so it actually shows that it's beneficial to the victim to participate in this. Now, victims who participated in these type of conferences also expressed feelings of empowerment within the justice process, and they said that they felt higher levels of emotional healing.

34:20 Now that said, these types of meetings can also go very, very wrong if the offender has allterior motives whenever they go in. For example, if they go into this wanting to plead their case or just tell the victim's daughter, I didn't do this, I didn't do this. Okay, that causes risk, an unnecessary risk to the victims because it may retraumatize these victims and they may learn things that are just completely inappropriate or should not be brought up. So this is why there are rules to this type of dialogue. If it happens, and they call it restorative justice, but these are the basic rules, okay. Number One, the victim has to initiate the meeting. The offender can never initiate it. You're not going to get to kill my mom and then write me and say, hey, i'd like to apologize. Maybe I don't want your apology. Maybe I want you to leave me the fuck alone. How about we start there, because that can be the response. Number Two, the victim will always get to lead the process, so to speak. The offender will not lead the victim will.

35:35 Sensitivity to the victim is a requirement, it is not a suggestion, and the entire process must provide for an empowering outcome for the victim. You have been convicted. You don't have the power here. The victim does. And if any of these rules are broken or it starts going south, administrators can very quickly and immediately remove the offender out of the room, stop it. The victim is limited in their harm. So basically, the reason I want to tell you this is because the victim must not use this process as a crutch for trying to garner sympathy or gain points for agreeing to apologize that they then turn around and say, hey, I apologize though, you should parole me out, you should let me out early. That's why it is the way it is today. Okay, it should be genuine, but the victim has to want it. So let's jump back now into Martha's story. Well, Martha had decided to reach out to Travis, with her Buddhist beliefs of forgiveness being the driving factor. But the way they did this was through writing letters, and over time the two began writing one another and through the years actually ended up striking up somewhat of a friendship. Maybe I shouldn't call it that, Maybe I should call it an understanding of now two adult minds agreeing that what happened was horrible. It should have never taken place. And you know they agree, you know, as Travis grew up that

37:08 this should have just never happened. So as the years passed and they continue to write, and they got closer Travis. You got to remember he was facing twenty eight and a half years in prison, but the opportunity for parole eventually did come twenty three years after the murder of her mother and her cousin. Martha now believed that Travis had been rehabilitated and that he deserved a second chance. She believed in this so much that she actually spoke to the parole board and she expressed her belief in him, in the fact that he had changed. She said, I do not any longer hold anger. I do not feel a need for vengeance, and she, basically, as the living victim of this crime, supported her offender's early release on parole. Now, I do not have the physical documentation to tell you exactly what was said at the parole meeting, but I do know that they have to look into the offender's behavior in prison as well as his willingness to accept responsibility for his crime before they're going to even budge so with that said, I'm assuming they looked into all of this. When they weighed everything, the parole board decided that Travis should get an early second chance, and they

38:40 granted him parole. They let him out after a double murder. He had done a lot of growing in those years, they felt, but there is a lot at stake when you release an offender early, especially one that is a double murderer. And in this case, he was sixteen when he did this. Travis was now, at the time of his release, a full grown, thirty nine year old man. If he was a troubled and horrible teenager who made a rash decision to end to people's lives, well by now, at thirty nine years old, he definitely knows better. And when Travis walked out of that prison a freeman, he had the world at his fingertips. Not only that, but he had been offered an extraordinary and that's the only word that I can use to describe this, an extraordinary opportunity, because Martha wanted to help Travis get back on his feet.

39:45 Felons have a very hard time gaining employment. We know this. No one wants to hire a felon, and no one definitely wants to hire a double murderer felon. I think we can all agree on that. So this is one of the biggest reasons that recidivism rates or people returning to prison, why it's so high. It's one of the reasons because if criminals can't support themselves financially, criminals then will often revert back to their prior behaviors and in this case like burglary. Because as of twenty twenty four, I want you to know I did go do a brief check on this, rates in the US were between recidivism rates were between thirty four and fifty nine percent of prisoners returning to prison within three years of release.

40:30 That's horrible that you know upwards of sixty percent fifty nine percent are going to go back. That's terrible. That's a terrible stat And if you want to know, California was the worst and South Carolina was the lowest. There you go a little fun fact there. Well, in the face of this information, she genuinely wanted his life to be something. And I can't help but feel like she wanted this so much because if he changed his life, if he did become a better person, then the loss of her mother and her cousin wouldn't be for nothing. That's how I would feel, And so I can't help but think she thought that if he hadn't changed, then they died for nothing. But if he did and he turned his life around, they in some way made their mark further on the world by bettering someone. Obviously she didn't tell me this, okay, but I just feel that in my soul. So, in an effort to give Travis every opportunity available to succeed, Martha offered him a job at the now prestigious Snowdon House as a groundskeeper. You have a woman here of incredible strength to not only forgive this man, but to also have the capacity for forgiveness beyond. Okay, she went above and beyond, and she gave Travis this offer, and he gladly accepted the offer.

41:49 If there was ever a story I could tell you about beautiful redemption, this one would be it. Imagine something so horrible going full circle and the killer ending right back up at the very property where it all had begun. But Martha kept her word, y'all, and Travis he showed up to work. As her confidence in him grew, she gave him a place to live on the property as well. For a year they worked side by side, and Martha was healing tremendously emotionally from all that she had been enduring and suffering for all of these years. And Travis too, y'all, he was able to work in a beautiful environment, a stark contrast from the nearly thirty years spent in prison, and both of them were thriving now to know just how amazing this place was. I want to put something into perspective for you too. It depends on how old you are. But have you ever seen the movie The Client, y'all?

42:54 Remember that old movie. It's an older one that has Susan Sarandon in it, and the story takes place in both ten to see in New Orleans. Well, guess what if you've seen it. That beautiful home, that stunning home that is in all of the New Orleans scenes in that movie, We'll guess what that is none other than the very Snowden House that I've been talking about this whole time. What a history this house has held to date. Well, it was a Tuesday, March the twenty fourth, when it was business as usual at the Snowden House. The home was in the midst of being used as a bed and breakfast, amongst all the other things I've mentioned, when Martha had made arrangements to sell one of the large chandeliers to an admirer. And this wasn't just any chandelier, y'all.

43:48 This had tons of history, and it cost a whopping ten grand to buy this chandelier, so obviously this was going to be a big undertaking to sell. And once the sale was complete, the buyers were grinning ear to ear as they counted out the cash to purchase it. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, and so on. They counted out all the cash until all ten thousand dollars was accounted for and placed in Martha's hand. So Martha and the buyers shook hands, and then they were soon off on their way with their beautiful new piece of history. And Martha had plans to go to the bank on the following day, which would have been a Wednesday, So until then she went, and she stashed the cash in a room in the home away from prying eyes or the public or anyone to know anything about this cash.

44:36 Business for the day was now concluded, and when Martha went at the end of the day to go grab the cash that she had stowed. It was gone, all of it, all ten grand was gone. Now, at first, I'm sure she wondered, wait, wait, wait, did I move it? Did I? What the hell? What did I did? I put it here? She searches quickly through these drawers or wherever. But it was gone, and no one else was at the house. Matter of fact, no one else had even been at the house after the sale. Well, of course, one person was an exception to that, and it was Travis.

45:17 But he worked the grounds. He wouldn't have been in the house. He wouldn't he wouldn't steal from her. And she just shook her head as the realization hit her. The only person who was there on the property, at the house was Travis. Martha's kindness and her forgiveness and her extension of the olive branch to try and do something wonderful over the last twenty four years, it had just been thrown right back in her face, just like hot ash slung in her face. Frustration and anger began to boil over. No, no, apps a fucking lutely not. No.

46:03 Martha was not gonna just take this one on the chin. This time, the disgust was just over the top. She did as she thought was right. She gave this man every single opportunity to better himself, and this is how he repaid her. She was done. Martha immediately called Travis and she confronted him with the fact that the money was missing. You were the only person here. And she didn't even want an explanation, She didn't want anything from him. She just told him, do not return to this house ever again. You are fired. Do not ever cross my path again. The end. And that was a wrap on all of this. The friendship between the two was severed beyond any repair, and she was just washing her hands of this altogether. This will never be She probably felt foolish in that moment. Unfortunately, felt very foolish. And all she had to do. All she had to do was make a phone call to his parole officer and let him know what had happened. And Travis it he would be heading straight back to prison. He would have to go serve out the remainder of his sentence because he was on parole and he deserved it at this point for damn sure, right. But Martha didn't do that. Martha went to bed that night, absolutely heartbroken, mad, and full of feelings of betrayal beyond words. She believed him when

47:36 he had said he was sorry for stealing her mother. She believed him when he said he wasn't actually the person who killed her mother all those years ago. Yes, in their writings, he said I was there, but I didn't pull the trigger. He said it was his buddy who was doing the robbing with him. He did not shoot her parents, or her mother and her cousin. But he was so, so very sorry for evening and even being a part of it. He told her that she believed it, hook line and sinker. But now now she knew for certain that she had been fooled. All of her energy and her time and her forgiveness just to be made a complete fool of it was enough to make her want to scream. All she needed at this point, though, as she started to just try to calm down, was a good night's sleep, and then in the morning she would be arrested. She could regroup, and then she could get back to work and just handle business like she did every day of her life. That following morning, as I told you, was a Wednesday, Wednesday, March the twenty fifth, and in the early morning hours, an alarm at the Snowden house was set off. No one answered the calls for confirmation from the alarm company, and police were dispatched en route to the home. So they arrived quickly. They exited their vehicles and they were looking around, scanning the area for anyone there, but no one was around. So

49:09 the officers then quietly and carefully went around to check the exterior of the home and to see if there was any entry point that could have caused the alarm, and that's when they noticed that the back door of the home was open. So they approached the door and they called out, making their presence known, Sheriff's office, police office, whatever. But as they cautiously entered that open doorway, they looked about the grand entry and they didn't see anyone. But their eyes were immediately drawn up to that grand staircase, but not because of its beauty, but rather the fact that there was a person lying at the top of it. So officers ran up the stairs to check on the person, and they found it to be a woman, and she was in terrible condition. She was bloodied, she was battered, and they recognized her as ma Artha, and she was lying next to a bag of personal effects. But before the officers could even render aid to her or even attempt to help her, they had to clear the home.

50:10 They had to make sure that the suspect or whoever had potentially done this. They needed to know that they weren't waiting in the home to ambush them and then them not be able to help her. This is a large home, I know, I've said that one hundred times. There were a million places that someone could hide. So with guns drawn and carefully having each other's backs, the two officers methodically and tactically cleared the home. When an officer just was spooked because he came upon a man hiding in the house. He was not expecting this obviously, I mean he was looking, but he certainly wasn't expecting it. And when he spooked that man that was hiding, that guy jumped up. He tore past the officer and took off running. The officers were step for step behind the man.

50:52 They were yelling for him to stop, stop, but he kept running. But he must have known the layout of the house well because there was a second story window and he jumped straight out of the second story window. The officers continued with their pursuit as the man fell to the ground and he started running across the property. So as they came outside, they watched him as he jumped into a vehicle and tried to speed away. The officers were right on his tail as he took off in this vehicle, But the ground happened to be very soggy that day, and the getaway vehicle that the man was in began to bog down into the mud. He gassed it hard. He tried to swerve side to side to kind of work the vehicle out, but he just couldn't get it. And the more he dug or he pressed the accelerator, the more the car dug down into the earth. So, realizing that he couldn't go any further, the suspect jumped out of the truck and took off running on foot. So these officers are running behind him now they're updating dispatch on their radio that were on foot.

51:51 We got a pursuit, single mail, and they continued giving chase across the property. So as the trio was running, they came up on the famous lake, the one that everyone loved so much that they had built houses upond for its beauty. The cabins were built on all of this. And whether the man slipped or he got so gassed from running away that he just chose to jump in the lake as a last means of escape, that's actually pretty unclear. No one really knows. But either way, the suspect went under the water. But the thing was, he never resurfaced. He never showed again at the top of the water, so the chase ended pretty much at the edge of the water for now. Now I want you to remember, this is a massive waterway. This is not a little tiny pond, Okay, it's big. So the alert now that police are putting out that we've got a suspect that's we can't find this was now amplified by the fact that Martha was tended to and she was dead.

52:58 Martha had been murdered, a murder suspect was lost by the police and no one knew where he was. So the residents are all put on high alert. They're locking their doors, they're all remaining vigilant and looking around their property for any sign of this guy believed to have murdered Martha. But when hours passed and there were no sightings, of this fleeing suspect. The police hadn't just said oh well and thrown their hands up. No, they went and they enlisted the help of local wildlife and fisheries officials who used sonar to search for any signs of the man. And this actually turned out to be a good move because sonar showed that there was a body at the bottom of this lake. So they locate exactly where the body is, They go in and divers pull out this body, and sure enough, it was fitting the description of the suspect that police had been chasing. When he jumped into the water, the suspect believed to have murdered Martha had drowned and he was dead as well. So both bodies, Martha and the suspected killer were sent for autopsy, and the identification of the man who murdered Martha would come as an absolute shock, stun. I don't even know what the word would be to their family, to her family, because the man pulled from the lake was none other than Travis Lewis, the very man that Martha had extended

54:31 her hand to and shown compassion for above far far above what most people would ever even consider. He had not only murdered her mother and her cousin, but now also robbed and murdered Martha as well at the very same property twenty three years apart. This is almost Shakespearean in tragedy in a w way. You know. Back when Travis was first found guilty, Martha's family spoke out against Travis getting the death penalty for killing her mother and cousin.

55:12 They didn't want him to get the death penalty. And then Martha chose to forgive Travis for killing her mother and her cousin. Martha advocated all those years later giving him a second chance. Martha offered him not only a job but a home, and Travis repaid her with burglary and ultimately an horrific death. So what did all of those years in prison teach Travis? And the answer, my friends, is nothing, absolutely nothing. It's episodes like this that have me reflect on things that have been said to me as a podcast host and things that have been said about me as a podcast host, things like, oh, Kelly, you're too harsh on people. Kelly, people can change, Kelly, you're hateful, Kelly, you don't like people, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Let me tell you something about me, and I'm not trying to make this story about me. This is about us as a people. Okay, I'm just using me as the example. I am not hateful.

56:26 I am what we call a realist, because if twenty three years in prison cannot teach someone that murder and theft is wrong, then I'm not mean. I am telling hard truths that people don't want to hear, and this episode serves as proof of that everyone does not deserve a second chance period. There is also a temptation here to think that what I'm saying is forgiveness is foolish, but please do not be so quick to hear what I'm not saying. Forgiveness is powerful and it's freeing in a multitude of ways. I'm all about people changing, i am all about forgiveness, but forgiveness has to come with limits.

57:17 Let this case be in your mind when you are making moves in your own life. Forgiveness cannot come at the expense of your safety. Goodness and trust do not coincide, and they are mutually exclusive to one another. They are not one in the same. Please be kind to people, even at times when they don't deserve it, because that is a reflection on you and your character. Also, please forgive if you can again, that's for you and your well being. But recognize that kindness and forgiveness do not equal access. You can be kind and forgive while also limiting access to yourself. You can be kind, and you can forgive and be full of goodness without the additional expense of your safety. You can wish someone healing and prosperity, but from a distance, you can wholeheartedly believe in redemption while also declaring but not with me. It's okay to make that distinction, because compassion without boundaries isn't bravery, it's exposure, and this can extend to many things that we are now experiencing in this world. Grace must be paired with wisdom.

58:40 When someone lies to you, when someone disrespects you, when they betray you, or they steamroll your boundaries, it doesn't become a puzzle that you need to solve. It is a resume and it was just handed to you in bold with references, because people are not that confus using. Forgive if you choose to forgive, heal if you choose to heal, But never think that your goodness requires you to stand unguarded in the path of someone who has already hurt you. And, above all else, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.